Delilah Dirk and the Pillars of Hercules by Tony Cliff
Delilah Dirk is a swashbuckling adventurer clearly patterned after Indiana Jones. She has swords rather than a bullwhip, but otherwise she has chases and fights and follows clues in search of fabulous historical artifacts and locations. She even has a jealous French adversary. And her inter-country travels are shown on a yellowed map with a dotted red line, just like Indy.
In this story, she and her faithful companion Selim run into Laurens Van Hassel, a Belgian journalist who winds up chronicling her adventure. They search for the Third Pillar of Hercules, a legendary city built and lost in times immemorial. The adventure takes them from Turkey to Algeria back to Turkey and Gibraltar, with plenty of action (that Van Hassel exaggerates in his letters back to the paper, though the adventures don't really need it).
I enjoyed the story a lot. The visual style is fun and Delilah is an intelligent and dedicated person. There's no romance and hardly any blood, so the book is kid-friendly, too. This volume is the third book in the series. I will definitely seek out the first two.
Highly recommended.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment